Breast Cancer Study May Prompt Wider Research

June 18, 1992|By FRANK SPENCER-MOLLOY; Courant Medical Writer

AHartford Hospital study of exposures to pesticides and PCBs could lead to a wider, government inquiry into possible environmental causes of breast cancer, says one of the researchers who took part in the study.

Dr. Andrew Ricci Jr., a pathologist at Hartford Hospital, said the small study, published three months ago, has stirred a lot of scientific interest.

"It is my understanding that the National Cancer Institute will be interested in doing" a broader study at multiple sites around the nation beginning by 1994, Ricci said.

He and Dr. Peter Deckers, a surgeon, compared fat tissue from 50 women. The tissue was already destined for removal because the women needed surgical biopsy of masses or other abnormalities in their breasts. The biopsies were conducted during five months in 1987 at Hartford Hospital.

The researchers found a tendency for women who had cancerous tumors to have higher levels of DDT, DDE and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) -- chemicals known to cause cancer in lab animals -- than did women with benign tumors.

There has been a steady, unexplained rise in the incidence of breast cancer in recent decades. One in nine U.S. women will develop breast cancer.

But PCBs have never been proved as carcinogenic to humans.

Once used in electrical insulation and lubricants, PCBs were banned in the United States in the 1970s because of safety concerns.

They remain a problem, though, collecting in sediments along river and ocean beds and filtering up through the food chain.

Once ingested by humans, they are stored indefinitely in fat tissues.

DDT, once the world's most widely used pesticide, was banned in the 1960s because of its decimation of birds and other animals. DDE is a toxic residue of DDT.

"Certainly with breast cancer, people [studying the increase] have been working with a lot of variables -- family history, hormonal and menstrual status," Ricci said. "Only recently have people been turning to possible environmental sources."

Working with colleagues from the University of Michigan at Ann

Arbor and at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, Ricci and Deckers found that the women with breast cancer had tissue concentrations of PCBs and DDE 50 percent to 60 percent higher than did the women with benign growths.

They also found elevated levels of DDT.

The results of their study were published in the March-April issue of Archives of Environmental Health.

The authors cautioned, however, about drawing premature conclusions. The number of women studied was small, and the study did not take into account other risk factors for breast cancer